


My Father's Sun

by XtaticPearl



Series: The BETA Compendium [2]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Friendship, Gen, Pepper Potts Feels, Pepper Potts's Shoes, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-21
Updated: 2016-11-21
Packaged: 2018-09-01 08:19:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8616565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XtaticPearl/pseuds/XtaticPearl
Summary: “What happened?!” she asked furiously and they shared a look before Naomi stepped forward and took Pepper by her shoulders gently.“Pep, the cops found your dad floating beneath the Manhattan Bridge today morning,” she said in a calm voice that belied the ice creeping into Pepper’s veins at the implication.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Heylo! This is my drabble/ficlet of the collection I’m writing on the BETA gang, a part of my fic A Cold Winter’s Night. The BETA gang is the group of descendants who are Tony’s closest friends and I really love the characters in my head. I hope you enjoy this collection as it progresses.

The news comes in on a Tuesday morning, and that never bodes well for Pepper Potts. Tuesday means wrangling her boss and the elusive inventor Tony Stark into emergency Board meetings, coordinating with Mrs. Arbogast - Maria Stark’s PA - about the Maria Stark Foundation’s venture updates, handling crisis situations in the HR department, and generally being hassled by innumerable tasks. Tuesdays are the bane of her existence in the bustling Stark Industries building. Tuesdays are her only allergy other than strawberries.

So when the news comes in, it goes to her voice mail. It sits there quietly, buried under inane gossip from her Aunt Ginny, irritated rants from her step-cousin Heather, a dozen or so messages from her brother Jonathan and one message from the last business investor Tony had insulted after a drunken harassment incident. It sits there like a ticking bomb, silent in its weight and intangible in the panic it would lead to later. 

“Hey, Pep, can your heels drill screws?” Tony spoke over her intercom and she bit back a sigh while ending her conversation with Senator Madden before pressing the call button on the other phone.

“What?” she asked, eyes roving over a few files scattered on her desk even as she listened to Tony.

“Nevermind, I need you to come in quick. Right away. Chop chop!” Tony sing-songed like the energy drink-laden eccentric he was on such mornings.

“With my heels, I presume?” Pepper asked even as she got up and rolled her eyes at the phone.

“Of course, my dear Watson,” Tony huffed and cut the call, prompting Pepper to move away from her desk and walk towards Tony’s office. She pushed open the sleek wooden door and raised her eyebrows at the scene presented in front of her.

“Are you..why are you standing on the couch, Tony?” she asked as she frowned at the light overhead like device he was holding up against the wall.

“Because I’m a genius, Pep-pot,” Tony quipped and turned to look down at her feet, “Ooh, you wore the 9-inch today. Perfect. Is it sharp? Great. Gimme gimme!”

“If you’re gonna cross-dress with my heels, I might sue you,” Pepper commented dryly, pulling off her shoes nonetheless, “You’ll fall and break them. I like my shoes.”

“Your confidence in me is staggeringly high,” Tony grinned at his own stupid pun and Pepper bit back a ridiculous laugh at the absolute dork of her boss and best friend.

She watched as he checked the device one last time before jumping down and walking a few feet back with her heels in hand. She realized what he was about to do just as he did it and let out a strangled choke when he _threw her shoe_  at the device, pointed heel hitting the glass like surface with a crack. Immediately there was a siren sounding and she looked in morbid awe as the office went on lockdown.

“Tony? Tony, cut the alarm!” she yelled when the sound blared on and Tony did a finger gun gesture at her before keying in a password on the holographic screen that emerged from the device when he touched it again.

“What..the hell was that?” she asked with a slightly tired laugh when he clapped once and looked at her with manic eyes.

“New StarkTech alarm!” Tony declared and launched into a technobabble about its advancement and ingenuity. 

“Heel,” Pepper  cut in when Tony took a breath and pointed at her black heel that was still in his hand, “My heel, please. And really? You couldn’t find a screwdriver or something to hit it with?” 

Tony pouted at her teasing and explained how he was making this for his mother’s office and he needed to test it with a heel so that Maria could use her own when she needed to. Pepper rolled her eyes but nodded and took back her shoe, slipping it on while standing on one leg.

“You’re a pretty flamingo, Potts,” Tony laughed and Pepper narrowed her eyes in a mock-glare but shook her head with a small grin at his excitement. 

“Anything else, Mr. Stark?” she asked and Tony was about to open his mouth to answer when Tony’s phone rang. “One sec,” he told her as he walked to his desk and picked it up, a small grin lighting his face when he saw the caller-id.

“Hey, old bird, what’s chirping?” he asked and Pepper knew that it was Maria Stark, the only person whose calls Tony would never decline or cut short. She resigned herself to wait for a few more minutes when she noted the smile fall from Tony’s face and a serious frown replace it.

“Okay, okay, yeah I know - what - no, Mom, listen we’ll come right away,” Tony says quietly, his voice firm and eyes drawn to the floor, “Yeah, I get it. Mom, no, don’t. We’re on our way, okay? Get Mrs.A to come in for the day…yeah, she won’t be here for a while, so we need the replacement..yeah, okay, sure. Bye, stay safe.”

“What’s wrong?” Pepper asked hesitantly when Tony ended the call, and felt a ball of dread coil itself in her gut when Tony looked up to meet her eyes with a rare solemn expression.

“Pep, we need to go somewhere right away,” he said simply, _kindly,_ like he was handling a scared bird, “Get your coat, I’ll get the car.”

“Should I call Happy?” she asked in growing trepidation but Tony shook his head even as he walked her out to her desk, simply grabbing his own car keys from the table.

“No, come on. I’ll drive.”

The drive from the office to wherever Tony has decided they have to go is unusually silent at first, Tony looking deep in thought as he drove his Lamborghini with a slightly white knuckled grip. 

“Tony?” Pepper called out from the shotgun seat, trying to get a read on him, “Is everyone okay?”

Tony smiled a half, tight quirk of his lips at that. “Yeah, it’ll all be fine,” he said and it somehow sounded more as a reassurance _for_ her than _to_ her. When he didn’t speak after that, Pepper took a deep breath and went with the ride, calming her nerves with positive hopes.

All of them vanished when Tony parked into the MS Hospital’s lot, and Pepper swallowed hard, hands tightening on her lap.

“Tony, what’s going on?” she asked nervously and Tony looked at her for a minute before getting out of the car and opening her door.

“We’ll find out together, come on,” he said and offered a hand that she took with foreboding. 

The foreboding only increased when they entered the hospital and ran into Jeanette Rhodes in her white coat talking calmly to an animatedly hissing Naomi Jones, flanked by a tired looking Amanda and Roger Carter-Sousa. 

“Pep!” Amanda called out when she spotted them first and strangely, that made Naomi stop and Jeanie turn to them with an empathetic smile.

“What’s going on guys?” she asked a bit anxiously, her eyes flitting between Naomi and Amanda, “What’s wrong, Naomi?”

“Nothing,” Jeanie replied, coming forward and angling herself close to Pepper subtly a calm expression on her face, “Nimi’s got her grandad’s stupidity. Come on in, both of you.”

“Sure, let’s all pile on Gabe Jones at every turn,” Naomi grumbled but everyone could see that it was forced annoyance and a smokescreen for the woman’s nervousness.

“Jeanie..” Pepper started, only to trail off when her eyes saw past the gang and her gaze landed on someone standing outside a room, leaning against the wall in a broken manner.

“Mom?” she gasped and pushed past the gang to walk hurriedly towards her stepmother, “Mom!”

“Gina!” her mom gasped with a crumpling face, using the endearment only her family called Pepper by, “Oh _God_ , Gina…Virgil..”

At the sound of her father’s name, Pepper felt the coil of tension only tighten and turned to look at Tony and their friends who had gathered around her.

“What happened?!” she asked furiously and they shared a look before Naomi stepped forward and took Pepper by her shoulders gently.

“Pep, the cops found your dad floating beneath the Manhattan Bridge today morning,” she said in a calm voice that belied the ice creeping into Pepper’s veins at the implication.

“No..what..what are you saying?” she whispered angrily, hoping that they would deny the knowledge she had deduced.

“Pepper, your dad tried to commit suicide today,” Naomi said quietly, her hands being the only support holding Pepper upright, “He’s not completely out of danger yet.”

“Oh,” Pepper breathed and swallowed hard against the roaring that had begun in her ears, “Oh.”

“He’ll come out fine, Pep,” Jeanie was saying somewhere, from a place that sounded too far away and Pepper knew logically that Jeanie wouldn’t lie, that Jeanie was a doctor herself but her head wasn’t correlating with her ears at the moment, “He’ll pull through. Trust me.”

“Oh,” Pepper repeated herself blankly and raised a shaking hand to wipe at her face before turning from Naomi’s hold and facing her anxious looking mother, “Mom, I–how–”

“I don’t know, _I don’t know_ , Gina,” Emily Potts choked out a half-sob and surged to draw her daughter into a tight and shivering hug.

Pepper knew that she should be consoling her mom, should be finding out the details from Jeanie and Tony, should be contacting a million other people - but she couldn’t do anything other than simply hang on as her mother tried to get herself under control, burying her sobs into Pepper’s hair.

****

Virginia Potts had never had many idols to look up to from her childhood. She had been taught from the beginning to look to the mirror to find inspiration.

 _Look at yourself, Gina_ , her dad had told her countless times, a warm arm around her shoulder as he looked at the mirror with her, _see who you are today and know that you’ve grown from yesterday. You’re your own hero. Look up to your own ideals and stand by them. They’re the only ones who’ll define you in the end._

Well, a 12-year-old Virginia had drilled that carefully into her mind, but she had also unconsciously added another name to her inspiration list - the name of the man who stood beside her in front of the mirror every time. The cheesy ‘My Dad Is My Hero’ posters that sold like candy in stores was a strong promise unto itself for the young girl who had known early in life to work hard and then plan harder for the next day. Growing in a middle-class household, she had learnt to value effort as much as excellence and knew that one did not come without the other. 

And she owed all this knowledge to the man currently in an induced coma, sleeping in a sterile room he had always claimed to hate. 

 _Suicide_ , her mind reminded her for the umpteenth time and Pepper found herself visualizing the word in block letters, like one of those bold lettering in high-school pamphlets. _Jumped off the bridge_ , she remembered Roger explaining, looking weary in his dirty uniform. She imagined the act, closing her eyes and trying to picture her father climbing the divider and standing on the edge. She tried to imagine him pausing for a minute, feeling the breeze of the suffocating Manhattan air, shared by a million other souls in that very minute. She tried to imagine him thinking about his wife, his son working in LA, his daughter working just an hour away. She tried to picture him opening his eyes and seeing none of them, seeing nothing but endless water, and diving - head-first and arms spread, welcoming an end.

“Coffee,” she heard a voice call for her and blinked, snapping out of the image of her father jumping into his presumed end. Blinking hard, she looked up to see Maria Stark standing in a beige blouse and simple white skirt - the picture of serenity and calm. The Stark matriarch was holding two cups of steaming coffee and looking down at Pepper calmly.

“No thanks,” Pepper heard herself say and cleared her throat at the hoarse tone of it, “I’m good.”

Thankfully, Maria didn’t question it and simply nodded before taking the seat beside her, holding both cups in her hands as she faced the blank wall opposite them. Pepper was in no mood to talk about the issue, and hoped that the woman beside her wouldn’t start a conversation on the topic.

In an answer to her tired prayer, Maria stayed silent, simply sitting and sharing the space of Pepper’s quiet anguish.

“I’m sorry about…the punch,” Pepper said after five minutes, referring to the hysterical punch she had delivered onto Tony’s face when he had tried to hold her mid-panic the first time she had glimpsed at her father.

“Ah, I wouldn’t think much of it,” Maria answered with a smile in her voice, “I think Amanda hit him harder on his shoulder a couple of years back for drunkenly calling her boss to..say a few things.”

“I’ve heard,” Pepper nodded, remembering the story of how Amanda Carter-Sousa almost lost her job thanks to Tony’s antics, “Though I think Naomi still boasts of her scars from Sharon’s nails as the worst.”

“Cat fights are interesting when involving politics,” Maria hummed and Pepper took a shaky breath, thankful for the meaningless drivel to keep her mind from churning more poison and pain. They share senseless and unwanted sentences, talking about everything other than the big elephant in the room.

“I should go and talk to mom,” Pepper said after fifteen minutes, making no attempt to stand though, “I should…do a lot of things.”

“You could,” Maria nodded but leaned a bit sideways, nudging Pepper’s shoulder with her own softly, “Or you could take some time for yourself first and let us handle things.”

“It’s not right,” Pepper shook her head and screwed her eyes shut at the onslaught of hot tears, “It’s not fair on everyone.”

“It’s not,” Maria Stark agreed, because who would know more about the unfair situations of life than her, “But it’s still happening. And we’re still here. We’re not going anywhere, Pepper.”

“I can’t ask you to -” Pepper breaks off, stifling an exhausted sob but Maria turns a bit and places a warm hand on Pepper’s clenched fist.

“You don’t have to, sweetheart,” she said quietly and Pepper bowed her head, letting herself break a bit more, sitting in a hospital waiting room beside the woman who had hired her for a job and had ended up welcoming her into an eclectic family.

They didn’t speak, didn’t give or take false assurances of everything being fine. They just sat there, two women, sharing warmth of an emotional bereavement and an intangible betrayal that never made sense but still hurt in the most brutal of ways.

*****

“I have to get back to work,” Pepper said on the third day after her father had jumped off a bridge. He had woken up on the second morning, weak and drowsy but alive. The doctors recommended (ordered) a psych eval that the once stubborn Virgil Potts accepted without a word. 

Pepper had sat beside her father, a silent pillar, as they had told him about his depression. She had sat beside her stepmother as they discusses the further plans, medication options, therapists, and guidelines. She had sat through the police routine, never looking down or looking ashamed of the man who had raised her. And whenever she had felt herself stumbling, needing another strength to draw from, the others had been right behind her - Naomi with her quiet ferocity daring the cops to try a taunting word, Amanda with her cool-headed legal expertise handling the legal procedures that arose, Jeanette helping Pepper’s mom through the guidelines agreed to by the doctors, Roger with his silent support in form of any tangible requirements -

And then there was Tony and Maria. Tony, who refused to back off and let the press catch this news to sully the Potts name. Tony, who diverted all the attention from Pepper onto himself, weaving snark and arrogance as a facade to goad the paparazzi into head-butting with him instead of her. Tony, who paid her salary in advance for the medical bills when she refused to take any other monetary support from him, and added a large bonus ‘for exemplary service’ out of nowhere. Tony, who got Maria Stark to send in her PA, Mrs. Arbogast, to fill in for Pepper till she could get back onto her feet.

“Right now?” Tony asked, looking up from his tablet, his tie loosened haphazardly.

“Preferably,” Pepper nodded tightly, swallowing down her nerves, “I’ve been away long enough, and we have a lot of important deals to get to.”

Tony opened his mouth, presumably to argue, but something on Pepper’s face must have tipped him off against it, prompting him to shut it with a sigh. He stared at her for a minute before nodding.

“You want to get back to work?” he asked and she shot him an irritated look, the thought chaffing at her instincts but her mind reminding her of her responsibilities as well.

“Yes, Tony,” she nodded and saw him give her an unreadable look that looked a lot like exasperated fondness, which was outrageous because others held that expression for _Tony_  usually.

“Fine,” he agreed with an amiable shrug, “Give me half an hour and we can get back to work.”

She wanted to protest but she had hardly believed she’d win so easily, so nodded in agreement and went to sit by her mother and brother till the time ended.

At the end of 30 minutes, she went looking for Tony in the hospital only to bump into him at the entrance, taking in the laptop, files and bag in his hands.

“What’s all this?” she asked with wide eyes and Tony simply smirked softly.

“Work,” he said with a shrug and dumped the laptop onto her arms before striding into the hospital again, leaving a stunned Pepper in wake.

“Tony! Tony, wait,” Pepper called out and caught up with him in the elevator, “This is ridiculous. We should go back to the office.”

“Potts, you wanted to work, I brought you work,” Tony said with a shrug and an eye-roll before continuing seriously when she looked like she was going to object, “Pepper, please. Your boss is already an ass who overworks you. Don’t make me more of a dick by making you leave your family now. Your work ethics won’t be affected if you work from here, I say so myself. So just…please. You want to work, and I get it. I appreciate it. But you don’t _have_   _to_  go to the office to do that. So, don’t. Stay here. Stay with those who need you more than SI does right now.”

“Is that an order?” Pepper asked with a weak smile, feeling irrationally emotional again but Tony being Tony, brushed it off with a cheeky wink.

“Nah, consider it a payment in forward,” he said and walked out of the elevator with a grin, “I’ll be needing more of your heels for my experiments in the future.”

Pepper shook her head and let out a watery chuckle before following Tony, her arms holding her laptop close.

Things didn’t miraculously change or become better immediately after her dad got back onto his feet. With their new knowledge of his depression, the atmosphere was a bit wary at home sometimes, and sometimes it got tensed when he would pick up on it. They had to go through a lot of talks, a lot of learning and re-learning from all sides. Relationships were tested and dunked into the boiling water at times. But it was worth it. It was worth it every day and every night, knowing that they were aware now. It made them stronger. There was no permanent cure, no magic potion that could erase the cloud. But there was always a silver lining to be found, to be held with the cloud they had come to accept.

“Hey, dad,” Pepper asked one day, weeks and months after the incident, as she stood in front of the mirror and looked at her father with a small smile, “What do you see today?”

Her dad looked at her for a minute before moving forward and placing a slightly weaker but still warm arm around her shoulder.

“My bright sun,” he said quietly, a small shadow of hope quirking his lips and Pepper knew that they would fight it ~~out~~ through. Together.

With maybe a little help from the friends she had come to realize were also her family. Together, they could shine through the darkness.

**Author's Note:**

> FEEDBACK PLEASE! <3


End file.
